


Highway

by fhsa_archivist



Category: Fast and the Furious Series
Genre: Alternate Universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-06-24
Updated: 2004-06-24
Packaged: 2019-02-05 18:43:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12800076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fhsa_archivist/pseuds/fhsa_archivist
Summary: how fast do you know that it's love?





	Highway

**Author's Note:**

> Note from Haven, the archivist: This story was originally archived at [Fandom Haven Story Archive (FHSA)](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Fandom_Haven_Story_Archive), was scheduled to shut down at the end of 2016. To preserve the archive, I began working with the OTW to transfer the stories to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in November 2017. If you are this creator and the work hasn't transferred to your AO3 account, please contact me using the e-mail address on [Fandom Haven Story Archive collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/fhsa/profile).

No surprise that he was the first one to wake up. After all, he'd left the party early.

 

Since leaving prison, Dom never lingered in a half-awake state. He would often find himself fully alert, standing up, his head churning with almost-remembered dreams. It was no different today. He had his pants on before he became conscious of the fact that he was conscious. 

 

He spared one glance down at Letty. Her hair spread over the pillow like ivy, a luxuriant, tangled mass. She muttered something at the loss of his warmth. Her face was relaxed in sleep, her fingers curled in a beckoning gesture on the white sheet. It made him sad for some reason.

 

He padded down the stairs trying to make as little noise as possible. Of course, it didn't really matter. All the people on this floor were the ones who had ended up too drunk to navigate the stairs. All dead to the world. He sighed and swung into the kitchen to get some orange juice. Or something. He had a weird taste in his mouth.

 

He ducked down to fumble through the squadron of beers that guarded the front of the 'fridge. He had to pull out half a dozen Coronas to get to the pitcher of juice. The cool smoothness of the bottles in his hand jostled memories of last night's aggravation to the front of his mind. As he stood in the kitchen, watching the early light catch the dust motes, his heart started to pound with remembered rage. He gulped his juice trying to wash it away. It was too early to be this angry. 

 

From the doorway, he could see Jesse nestled down on the couch with his nameless skank and, if he squinted, he could make out the back of Leon's head and arm lolled over the other sofa. Dom wanted to go over and shake them awake, smack some answers out of them. But he didn't. He knew the rules. He'd gotten angry once, getting angry again was a chick thing to do. 

 

Dom thought about how they would treat him today. In a few hours, they'd be warily trying to make him laugh, make him forget their abandonment. And he would laugh. He would forget. Until they did something else that showed just how completely they took him for granted. He sighed and pressed the heels of his palms into his eyes. He looked out the back window where the first brightness of sunrise had eased into an azure blue. Sad and angry like this was no way to be on Sunday morning. 

 

It was too early to do anything. He toyed with the idea of cooking breakfast, thought about going back to bed to toss and turn for a few hours. Spared a thought for the heavy bag in the garage. Garage. He should go to the garage, work out his feelings on the bore of a carburetor. Get a jump on the week. 

 

He turned to pad back up the stairs, when the dream died. The RX-7. Stranded in a lot downtown. Dom grunted in frustration. Shit. He'd have to get dressed, shake someone awake, wait until they were ready, drive down with them, endure their smartass remarks, find the damn place... Dom resisted the urge to bang his head on the wall a few times.

 

God damn it to hell. They were a team, right? Why did he end up feeling like he was pulling this train?

 

Dom grabbed his boots from where Mia had neatly tucked them at the top of the stairs. He slid down a few steps and began to lace them up, meanly wishing everything in life was as easy to pull in line. This feeling was growing all too familiar. 

 

Dom paused.

 

There was a bright spot buried somewhere in the intense, indelible memory of the night before. Dom pulled the last lace tight and regarded his feet. He had spent 122 hours and almost $8,000 customizing the Mazda. 

 

And he'd come home in a taxi.

 

But yet...there was something good...some silver lining. For some reason, having to abandon his baby wasn't bothering him now. Dom wasn't so lost to ego not to realize that his walk of shame up the driveway had gone largely un-witnessed. And having a companion had lessened the embarrassment...

 

That was it. The bright spot. The kid with the ...blond...no, the...eyes...no, the kid with the...cool car. Which had gotten so unfortunately trashed. That kid, who hadn't batted an eye at all the craziness that came with Dom's territory.

 

He was surprised how easy it was to draw the snowman's face to life. But hey, the kid had been showing up at the diner for weeks. Impossible to completely ignore. Dom ran his finger over the seam of his boot, sketching the lines of the stranger's face.

 

Dom gave himself a headrush by rocketing to his feet when he realized what he was doing. Daydreaming wasn't getting the Mazda back, the garage opened, the bills paid.

 

Dom had mounted the stairs when a flash of red made him pause to look out the window set into the door. A flash of red on the street outside. Harry's truck parked on the far side of the street. Dom stepped a full stride back and then shook his head with his own stupidity. It was dark in here, brighter out there, there was no way that the kid could see him standing at the tiny window. But he couldn't shake the feeling that those steady eyes could strip away the solid door, penetrate the darkness to where Dom was shifting foot to foot.

 

Dom squared his shoulders against the weird feeling of vulnerability and yanked open the front door and thumped down the stairs. He loped over to the red truck, half-hoping to see a little surprise, hell, even unease, in those blue eyes. He thrust his head half inside the open window and rasped, "You left something? Or what?"

 

The kid regarded him without speaking for a moment. But not like he was at a loss for words or anything. Weird. 

 

The kid shifted his gaze back to Dom's house, frowned, and ostentatiously scanned the street. "Started worrying about your Mazda. I already owe you one car, don't think I could cover two."

 

Dom pressed his upper lip over his lower one to keep from smiling. Again the kid showed up, like the answer to a prayer. "You have an overdeveloped sense of responsibility." 

 

The kid half-shrugged. "I'm just covering my ass."

 

Dom knocked his fist twice on the door panel. "Well, don't guess I should let it go to waste." He backed up a step to circle around to the passenger side.

 

The kid held up one upturned hand for a moment and rubbed his fingers together in the universal symbol for money. Dom paused for a moment, surely that couldn't be what Brian was implying. Brian looked at him for a second, repeated the gesture and said mildly, "Chilly this morning."

 

The kid was just feeling the air. And it was chilly....so, hey, maybe Dom should go put on a shirt. Huh. And get the fucking keys to the Mazda that were still in his jacket. And not be so damn anxious to jump in the car with blondie.

 

Dom turned on his heel and walked at the most even pace he could muster across the street, back up the stairs and into the house. By the time he got to the door, the heat had faded from his face.

 

****************************************

 

"So how'd you get into it?"

 

He knew the kid (Brian, his name is Brian) wouldn't have any trouble interpreting the question. It was the question: when did you realize that the most important thing about your life was its speed? When did the hum of an engine become as sweet as your mother's voice?

 

The smile that slipped over Brian's face was like candy. But he stayed quiet. He steered through the early morning streets with a businesslike economy, like he knew exactly where he was going.

 

"What's the story, Mr. Arizona?" Dom teased. "Did you cut your teeth out on those desert roads?"

 

"For sure I did," Brian smiled that smile again. It made Dom's chest hurt. "But not in Arizona. I grew up in Barstow. Formative years and all."

 

"Re-formative years?" At Brian's grin, Dom's voice sank to a growl. "So that makes you practically local."

 

"Yeah," Brian's smile dimmed slightly. He paused for a long moment, looking up at a red light. Dom waited. Brian didn't have to talk if he didn't want to. Dom waited, hoping.

 

"Buddy of mine out there....he and I once 'borrowed' a car and took it out highway 127." Brian grinned at Dom's raised eyebrow. "Headed to Vegas, I think. 'Course, considering that we were fifteen and sixteen, we didn't really have much of a chance to be high-rollers, even if we had gotten there."

 

Brian shrugged and continued. "Anyway, trooper caught wind of us about 10 miles from Nevada. But, you know, he's in a Ford CV..."

 

"So he's 'charged, but handling like a cow..." Dom filled in.

 

"Yeah," Brian bobbed his head. "Sucks for him. He almost catches us about ten times but we manage to pull up on him each time. He didn't call for back-up, we'd become, like, his personal vendetta. Lucky for us. But he really starts to push when we get near the state line. So, I start to think that it's all in for us. I start planning what I'm gonna say when they take us in. Think about what I'm going to tell my mom. Not pretty."

 

"So what happened?"

 

"My friend punches my knee when he thought I was giving up..." Brian paused for a while. "He had more to lose than me, maybe. It might have been...harder...for him....He punches my knee and he jerks the wheel and throws us in a bootlegger turn. We go off-road and the cop follows us. Big mistake. He starts fishtailing and we just leave him in the dust."

 

"So what you did last night..." Dom started.

 

"Yeah, I've had some practice..." Brian's face turned serious. "That was it for me, man. That's when I learned...It wasn't just getting away from the cops...it was just getting...away, you know what I mean?"

 

Dom nodded slowly. Away from the heat and the dust and the boredom. Away from all the petty bullshit that life tried to sink you with. He knew that feeling, intimately.

 

"Where's your friend now?"

 

Brian turned to face him for a long moment and Dom began to fear that his friend was dead. 

 

"He's inside," Brian said so softly that Dom almost had to read his lips.

 

"I'm sorry," Dom returned, equally soft.

 

"Was nothing you did," Brian's voice had firmed and risen. "We both learned to drive out in the desert. We didn't really have anyone but each other to race. But that was enough." 

 

"You wanna really go, the desert's the place to do it." Dom agreed. "Some of my best memories are out on state road 190."

 

"Death Valley," Brian pursed his lips appreciatively. "That's a good one. I did 154 once out on Interstate 8 near Yuma."

 

"I did 162 for five minutes out on Highway 6. Alone." Dom countered. 

 

"Five minutes?" Brian made a suitably appreciative face. "Where'd you put your extra gas cans?" 

 

Dom laughed with sheer pleasure. The kid just understood. 

 

"You ever make it up to Highway 50? Nevada?" Brian asked as they pulled into the garage. 

 

"The loneliest road in America?" Dom made a tour-guide gesture. Brian's lips flirted with a smile. "No, I've never been up that far. Heard it was cool though. You been there?"

 

"Yeah. Once. And it's gorgeous." Brian's eyes had gone all far-seeing, so much so that Dom was actually surprised when Brian steered them unerringly into the space beside the Mazda.

 

Brian twisted the engine off and the truck sank into silence. 

 

Dom put his hand on the door but that was as far as it got. He suddenly had no inclination to move from Harry's truck which was roomy and warm and...they were having a conversation, damn it, it would be rude to leave. 

 

"You got any deliveries to make this morning?" Dom tried to make it sound casual. 

 

"One," Brian said, businesslike, and then smirked at him. "But I'm almost done." 

 

Looking into Brian's face, Dom felt the dim garage suddenly transformed around them. Brian's golden skin and blue eyes seemed to metamorphose into a landscape as beautiful and remote as he was. They were out on a high butte in a lonely desert. Dom could almost see the striations in the rocks, lean into the steady breeze and hear a hawk's cry echo in the canyon beneath their feet. The desert. A bigger, freer, wilder world. 

 

Brian tapped the steering wheel with his thumb and suddenly they were back in downtown Los Angeles in an anonymous parking garage off 7th Street. Dom spoke quickly to cover his lapse.

 

"So Highway 50, it's a good stretch? It's as deserted as they say? No cops?"

 

Brian smiled, "No freakin' lizards, even. It's amazing, this beautiful highway from nowhere, going to nowhere, with nothing in between." 

 

"Sounds like you want to go back there sometime," The words felt weird leaving Dom's mouth, like he was speaking in a language he'd forgotten.

 

Brian shrugged a little. "I might want to...I don't need to." Brian was looking past Dom's shoulder and it was as if his eyes had shadowed from transparent to opaque. "Since then, all highways are lonely enough for me."

 

"That..." Dom trailed off, unsure of how he planned to finish the sentence. That's weird. That seems wrong. How could someone who looked like Brian ever spend one lonely moment? Dom scratched his nails across the nap of his pants, completely at a loss to respond. 

 

"Tell me about your first time."

 

Dom jerked up from what he realized was an uncomfortably hungry regard. What?

 

Brian wiggled his eyebrows. "C'mon, I told you mine."

 

Surely Brian didn't want to know...oh, wait, they were still talking about cars.

 

"You wanna hear about my first time racing or you wanna hear about my first time winning?" Dom leaned back and looked sidelong at Brian's grin.

 

"Ummmm." Brian squeezed his eyes shut as if he had to consider the options seriously. "Winning."

 

"Good, 'cause I don't remember when I started racing. My old man raced." Dom felt his teeth click at the end of that sentence. He paused for a long second, quiet with the realization that he'd just mentioned his father for the first time since 1998. God, what a weird day...

 

Dom spoke again more slowly, "You know, you can memorize every trick in the book, you can adjust every little thing until on paper your car's gotta be the fastest thing on the planet, but until you...believe you can win, you won't. It's that simple."

 

"So...when?" Brian obviously wanted the story, not a lecture.

 

"I used to race down by the docks in high school. It was nothing really. Just a bunch of kids...I mean, we still thought we were the hottest shit walking but..." Dom rolled his head on his shoulders. "It was amateur hour."

 

Brian nodded encouragingly. 

 

"So I'm headed down there one day, sneaking out, my dad didn't really like me doing that kind of crap...he wanted me to save it for the tracks. Anyway, I stop to gas up in Torrance." 

 

Dom sank into the memory. "Construction's closed the ramp back to the highway so I pull out onto some side street, trying to find a way back and this dude pulls up next to me. Older guy with an older car, sweet Dodge ride, old American heavy metal. I can feel the engine's rumble in my bones."

 

Brian murmured, "Old school."

 

"Yeah, exactly." Dom paused. "We're stopped at a light and suddenly the street is just empty. Like it was fated to happen. His window was open and he looked at me looking at him. He flicked up his shades and said to me in this deep voice, 'Kid, you wanna go?'"

 

Brian chortled quietly.

 

"I didn't say anything, I just revved once and then the light changed. We shot off, leaving about 60 feet of rubber between us. I could hear him beside me and pretty soon I could see him too, he was pulling away, his ol' Hemi was just eating me alive. My mind was telling me, punch it now, if he takes the lead, you'll never get the momentum back. There'll be no way to win. But then there's another voice inside saying, wait, just another second, just one more. The tach was just...howling and I was pretty sure I was about to blow a gasket or bend all my cylinders. But I shifted up and in the ninth second, I punched the Nos. I was on him and then by him before I could breathe once."

 

Dom looked out at the shafts of new sunlight. "I pulled up and it took him three seconds to get to me. He said to me, 'Good going, kid. You've got it.' Ever since then, when I race, I hear that voice again, telling me the right thing to do."

 

Brian had tilted his head and was looking out at Dom from the corners of his eyes. Something about his serious face made Dom want to make a joke. 

 

"So the first race I won was for no stake at all." Dom showed Brian his empty palm. "Nothing, nada, zippo. Ain't that something?"

 

Brian shrugged. "It wasn't for nothing, man. Say it was for the learning experience. Or for respect."

 

Dom raised his shoulder and bit the corner of his lip to keep from smiling, "And some people think that's more important." 

 

"Yeah," Brian said seriously. "You're damn right."

 

Dom did laugh then. Brian joined in after a second. It sounded loud in the truck's cab, echo-y in the empty garage. They stopped laughing at the same time and just regarded each other. Brian's eyes flashed with some recognition and he leaned forward as if to whisper.

 

It occurred to Dom that this peculiar sensation was not a feeling, but rather the absence of feeling, the absence of a familiar weight. Some blank emotion that had been eating him was stilled, filled, destroyed. He felt lighter somehow. He realized it when he saw the flash in Brian's eyes. Highway 50 might be the loneliest road in the world, but he wasn't on that road now. He was here. With Brian.

 

Brian had leaned forward and his eyes had grown darker and more conspiratorial. He had leaned into Dom's space without Dom really noticing, so far that Dom suddenly realized he could see a tiny white scar on Brian's lip, the darker fringe of his eyelashes when he blinked. Too close.

 

Without thinking, Dom put his hand up against Brian's chest as if to push him back and then stopped. Dom's index finger rested in the hollow where Brian's neck met his chest and he could feel the steady drum of Brian's heartbeat. So close.

 

Dom's mind was screaming at his hand and arm to push, shove...show him who's boss! but a deeper, quieter voice cut through the panicked noise and whispered: why would you do that if you don't really want to?

 

"Dom," Brian said softly. "You wanna go?"

 

Dom leaned forward and the bigger, freer, wilder world opened its lips for him.


End file.
